Tony's Xterra & Short Course Tri Group - OPEN (Page 3)

Tony -

What's the advantage to that? I know that it's supposed to train your body to burn fat instead of sugar. Does that translate into better performance through increased endurance? What's the down side to it (other than the tough 30 days of getting used to it)?

Missed my run this morning due to oversleeping. That's ok...I'll get it in tomorrow morning. Keep up the work everyone..

-Joel

The benefit is to extend the amount of time your body is able to burn fat at higher intensities before it crosses over to carbs, also known as the crossover point.  

When your in a race, your body first dips into fats for energy - think of it as higher octane fuel. What happens when you drop some bacon fat onto the stove - it lights up! 

Problem is, we are SO consumed with carbs / sugar that your body doesn't do such a good job of burning fat.  In fact, probably around 40-45 min and thats in.  In most races, Olympics lasting 2 hours to IM lasting 12, you can see how thats a problem.  Being able to extend that (to say 1:15-1.5 hours) will be greatly beneficial for anyone.  

I live in CT.  I should have said when there is no snow on the ground.  We still have about 6 inches showing.

I think we will be going back to traditional fueling methods during the season.  There may be some modification, as there always will be when you start testing fuel strategy in training before the races.

To be fair it's kind of controversal.  But, people have seen good results.  Honestly, I struggled with this.  I was worried about giving up a month or two of any significant gains while on the diet since workouts are really not quality enough to gain you anything.  I thought, why not keep the "Racing Weight" (book by Matt Fitzerald) strategy and eat clean but fuel the workouts.  What was I gaining by doing this?  For me:

1.  I've been into fitness and working out like crazy for several years now.  There is still visible fat on my body I can't seem to tap into and burn off, no matter how much I diet/exercise.   Teaching my body to burn the fat may help me tap into tha,t and take off those lbs. improving power to weight ratio's and decreasing the likelyhood of run injuries, increase bike climbing performance, etc..

2.  After careful thought I won't really be losing a month or two of gains.  I'm going to project a non-generous weight loss of 10lbs on the diet in 8 weeks.  In the same 8 weeks, this time of year, I may seem a 5% gain in FTP on the bike.  You could see more, but IMO you'll probably peak to early in the cycle for race season if you see more than that in this particular point of the calendar.  So......a 10lbs decrease in weight yields me a 6% increase in power/weight ratio.  Bottom line:  I may even see a bigger performance gain from the diet than I normally would from weight loss!  So even if I don't see the results from fat burning, I get them from a little weight loss.  And....if I lose even more weight on this, say possibly 16lbs, I'll see bigger gains in performance!!!  I'd see a 10% gain in power/weight with a 16lbs weight loss!

Cool. It makes sense. I'd have a really hard time getting through the transition period. I don't have much fat (getting an analysis soon as I had to switch gyms and they'll do it for free) and I eat frequently. I am shifting to a meat-lite diet in an effort to incorporate wider variety in my diet. I also don't like the idea of gels during a race when I make an effort to eat unprocessed foods outside of a race. I'm exploring some other options now...

Here's a question: I'm looking at mainly Xterras this coming season and the Xterra trail runs require more side to side (lateral) movements than a standard run in a tri. Would it be beneficial to do some workouts targeting those lateral stability muscles with this in mind? Obviously, it'd be best to get to some trails and run, but I rarely have the time to invest in getting to the trails. I used to play soccer, so I have some ideas of what I could do, but I don't know if it'd be worth it. Ideas?

- Joel

Hi Tony,

I am Steven, 46Y, new to Tri (and MTB), from the Netherlands, but living since '95 in Tirana,Albania;

current shape; reasonable, slightly overweight at 69kg, should be max 65.

my plan;

1) to race the Xterra Greece (1.5K/30K/10K) the 15th of june

2) the www.beach-challenge.nl (1K/26K/9K) the 13th of july

as preparation;

MTB Thassos Cup 58K 27th of april (http://www.mtb-thassos.com)

Well said my friend, well said... 

Yes, this diet should also help with race day performance.  A common problem you hear, especially long course athletes is they have GI issues because they eat too much during the race!  Well, if you teach your body to better burn what it has, then you don't eat as much, and you won't crap your pants halfway through the race.  Pretty simple.  ) 

Depends on what kind of workouts your talking about to target those stability muscles.  If your talking about doing something like the dude in the video I blogged about a while ago, then no not going to work.  Check it out here, I'll wait... 

Waiting... 

OK, welcome back.  Funny huh!  LOL.  The best way to train is specificity, or, trail running.  If you can't do that, do some weight lifting and that helps.  Its better to stand on stable ground and lift heavy things to let your body stabilize, then to stand on something like a bosu ball or other unstable platform and look silly at the gym.  

I like my trail shoes, but you can run with normal road shoes.  I've done it.  You just have to be a little more careful.  Some of the road shoes don't grip quite as well.

Crap Tony!  I'm limpin' a bit today!  Up till now my pool running sessions only resulted in a few little blisters.  But last night I noticed there was rough spot in the lane and it really tore my feet up.  My feet were still dripping blood when I got home.  Wore through the skin pretty good.  I should have worn my vibrams!  I'm not sure I'll be able to get them on now! LOL

On a brighter note, I was able to get through 3x8 goblet squats and 2x8 single legs squats before my quads locked up again last night!  So either I'm getting used to the weight training or the fat burning process on the diet is starting to kick in.  Not sure I'll find out tonight.  My legs are pretty tired from weights.  I'm sure 60 minutes at Z3 on the the bike will be a challenge.

I did a mini-Xterra last year and a regular Xterra and I did both in my road running shoes. Honestly, trail running shoes are low on my list of tri things that I want/need.